BENGHAZI, Libya, March 9 (Reuters) - Libya's rebel
leadership made an impassioned plea on Wednesday for the
international community to impose a no-fly zone to ground
Muammar Gaddafi's warplanes and halt the daily death toll.

From his Tripoli stronghold in the west, Gaddafi said on
Wednesday that the Libyan people would take up arms if a no-fly
zone was enforced as this would prove that Western powers want
"to take control of Libya and to steal their oil."

Rebels on the frontline between the rebel-controlled east
and Gaddafi's forces in the west are increasingly frustrated at
the failure of Washington and the West to act. Rebels constantly
fire off machine guns at attacking warplanes.

"They had a no-fly zone in Iraq. Why is Gaddafi their
darling and Saddam Hussein was not?" volunteer Naji Saleh told
Reuters near the oil town of Ras Lanuf, referring to the air
exclusion zone imposed on Iraq for more than a decade.
Continued...